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Updated 2026-07-06

AI readability site audit

TL;DR

Before an AI engine can cite you, it has to read you. AEO Mantis's site audit crawls your pages the way AI crawlers do and reports what blocks citation: unreachable pages, thin or unliftable content, missing metadata and structure — with concrete fixes, prioritized.

Stylized mockup of the AI readability audit report: a large score ring three-quarters full, two stat cards, and a checklist of audit rows with pass and fail status dots, one failing row highlighted.
The audit at a glance: one readability score, the checks behind it, and the failing rows to fix first.

Why AI readability is its own problem

AI crawlers are less forgiving than Googlebot: many don't execute JavaScript, give up faster, and quote only what's plainly in the HTML. A page that ranks fine in classic search can still be invisible to answer engines — client-rendered content, blocked bots, or key claims buried in interactive components all read as empty pages to a retriever.

What the audit checks

  • Reachability — can crawlers actually fetch your key pages: status codes, redirects, robots rules, response times.
  • Content structure — headings that match questions, answer-first sections, liftable claims versus walls of prose.
  • Metadata and structured data — titles, descriptions, and the schema that helps engines classify your pages.
  • Citability — whether pages state the direct, specific facts an engine can quote (citation mechanics).

Audits run at a configurable depth and page budget, and results are scored so the highest-impact fixes surface first.

From audit to opportunities

Findings feed the Opportunities queue: each issue becomes an actionable item — fix this page, add this section, unblock this path — and pairs with content generation when the fix is new content rather than a repair.

Key facts
  • Crawls with strict safety and timeout discipline — only public HTTP targets, politely.
  • Scores findings by impact so fixes are prioritized, not just listed.
  • Depth and page budget are configurable per audit run.
  • Results connect to Opportunities and content generation for the fix itself.

Frequently asked questions

The lens is AI retrieval: JavaScript-dependence, liftable claims, and answer-first structure matter more; some classic ranking factors matter less. Run both — they overlap but don't substitute.

No — audits fetch a bounded number of pages with timeouts and rate discipline, and only ever public HTTP(S) URLs.

You choose depth and page budget per run, within plan limits.